Various properties of cardiac and smooth muscle calmodulin-dependent myosin light chain kinases (MLCKs) have been compared. The enzymes exhibit the same isoelectric point (6.5) but differ markedly in molecular weight (Mr = 72 000 for both canine and bovine cardiac MLCK, and Mr = 130 000 for smooth muscle MLCK). Comparison of the tryptic peptide maps of bovine cardiac and turkey gizzard MLCKs indicates that the cardiac enzyme is a fragment of a protein homologous to the smooth muscle kinase. While the smooth muscle kinase can be phosphorylated by the catalytic subunit of cAMP-dependent protein kinase, the same is not true for either bovine or canine cardiac MLCK. Controlled tryptic hydrolysis of phosphorylated smooth muscle MLCK, followed by affinity chromatography on a column of calmodulin–Sepharose, enables separation of a phosphopeptide (Mr = 22 000) from a mixture of peptides of Mr = 50 000 and 24 000 which are bound to the column in the presence of Ca2+ and eluted with ethylene glycol bis(β-aminoethyl ether)-N,N′-tetraacetic acid. The phosphorylation site, therefore, is distinct from the calmodulin-binding site. It appears that cardiac MLCK is proteolyzed during the isolation procedure. The purified cardiac enzyme represents a proteolytic fragment which retains Ca2+ and calmodulin dependence but only a fraction of the specific activity of the native enzyme, and has lost the site of phosphorylation by cAMP-dependent protein kinase. A protease is shown to exist in myocardium which is capable of digesting smooth muscle MLCK rapidly at low temperature, and which is resistant to classical antiproteases.
Phosphorylation of smooth muscle myosin light chain kinase by Ca2+-activated, phospholipid-dependent protein kinase.
